http://www.theage.com.au/national/for-some-workers-the-struggle-will-never-end-20100615-yd9p.html
ANDRA JACKSON June 16, 2010
GURINDJI member Peter Inverway grew up
hearing his stockman father's tales of once having been paid in
rations, never dreaming he might one day know the same indignity. That
was until the federal government intervened in Northern Territory
indigenous communities three years ago. Mr Inverway, a construction and
building worker, helped build the railway between Alice Springs and
Darwin in 2002.
Since the intervention, his earnings have gone from a
peak of $1200 a week to about $4.80 an hour for him and other Gurindji.
He works a 30-hour week, building an arts and crafts centre for
Kalkaringi. Every fortnight, Centrelink pays $250 into his bank, his
''choice'' money and $150 is paid into a Basics Card [rations] with
kindergarten-style drawings of what it can be spent on - clothes, food,
health items and hygiene products.
''We've gone back to when my people were working for rations of tea,
flour and a bit of tobacco,'' he said in Melbourne where he was meeting
trade union leaders.
His father was one of the 200 Gurindji stockmen, domestics and their
families who walked off the Vestey family-owned Wave Hill cattle
station in August 1966 over conditions.
They struck for seven years, setting up a camp on part of their
traditional lands at Wattie Creek which they returned to its indigenous
name of Daguragu.
In 1975, after Gurindji leaders toured Australia with the support of
trade unions to demand their land back, prime minister Gough Whitlam
came to nearby Kalkaringi to hand back part of the Vestey land to the
Gurindji.
His father handed down stories of the strike and of Whitlam,
immortalised in the song From Little Things Big Things Grow.
Mr Inverway, 40, is one of about 800 Gurindji spread between Daguragu
and Kalkaringi, north of Alice Springs, near Katharine.
Since the intervention prices have gone up and the Gurindji workers
struggle to make ends meet.
Despite visits from ''the government's housing mob'' not one house has
been constructed in Kalkaringi where locals asked for 11 houses, built
in the '60s, to be replaced urgently.
Mr Inverway, born in one of these houses, still lives there with 16
family members. ''You can see through the cracks inside to the outside
and when the wet season comes we shut off the power because water gets
in the light fittings and we don't use the front door because we put
blankets there to stop the water coming inside.''
The Gurindji have received support from unions such as the Maritime
Union of Australia and the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy
Union.
Gurindji workers are touring Australia with union backing as the third
anniversary of the intervention nears on Friday with demonstrations in
capital cities calling for its dismantling.
